Kids Prep Minute: Drills

Another post here about preparing with kids in the house.  If you don't have kids, read it anyway.  Maybe it will get your imagination going on something you could do to be better prepared also.

Our topic today is drills, and I'm not talking about your favorite Makita here.  I'm talking about practicing your emergency plans to the extent possible.  If your kids are anything like mine, I can talk till I'm blue in the face and they amazingly can't remember a thing I said five minutes later.  Physically doing something reinforces what you talked about in their memories.  Did mom say go left or right?  But if they've run the drill and always gone right, there will be no question when the time comes to do it for real. 

Drills or "emergency plan practice" also help to work out kinks in your plans you might not have known were even there.

Fire drills are one common area to practice.  Our kids love fire drills, even though we've never actually let them break the window in their room.  We try to practice as close to the actual plan as possible and found we needed to make sure they had something hard by their beds to get the window broken if they needed it, so now that's where the wooden rifles go.

Think about your situation and the likely events your family faces.  Maybe you also need to practice getting out of the house fast but not immediately as would be necessary in an evacuation for flood or wildfire.  Set a timer and see how long it takes you to get everybody to the car with enough gear to either camp or hotel-it for 3-4 days.  Or see how ready you are in 10 minutes and use that to build a better plan. 

Maybe practice getting everyone in the house to a safe-room in the house in the event of a break-in or other similar event.  Time them, give them rewards for quick responses, have fun with it.  Drills can be planned or random and can be made to be fun for the kids while enforcing the important plans your family has for emergencies.  You could dream up some seriously fun and useful family-night activities incorporating emergency drills.  Have you practiced emergency drills with your family?  How did it go?